Turchina84- is that not what everyone's brain does daily? Lol. Piper is such a fun and complex character to work with, loved giving her inner monologue

17vauseman17- I love when people point out their favorite parts and it's interesting that you found multiple nostalgic pieces in this one chapter (hadn't realized there were multiple things but there were! This story is interwoven so many times, I failed to notice.) I remember people feeling very attached to the vase the first time around, much more than I expected. Fucking Sylvie.

Sandfromoz- thank you so much, working on it

Acanofbeans- glad you found the last "cute." Lol. Sure. Next 5 for me were among the harder ones to write but found the most fulfilling. Enjoy. Lemme know what you think.

36

"Your moms are great," Lauren tells him, flopping down on the floor of his bedroom room with a fistful of Latin American candies.

His hand rests on his bedroom door; he's about to shut it when he remembers his mom's rule from the night before. But that was when she thought they'd be home alone, she probably wouldn't care since she and Piper were in the apartment. What could she possibly do to make this night more embarrassing? Put a fruit bowl on her head like Carmen Miranda and call him "Hi-may?" Yes. Yes, she could and after this night, he wouldn't put it past her. He opens his door open as far as it can go.

She tries to restart the conversation as he has just been looking into the air for a solid minute, "you don't think so?"

He kneels in front of her and looks at her oddly, having just barely survived one of the most embarrassing dinner's of his life. "Are you queer?," he asks her with complete disbelief.

Her eyes go wide as her fingertips futz with the hairband that holds her braid together, her face tightens with discomfort, "don't say that word."

He felt scolded. Were all the females in his life meeting secretly to make his stomach invert on itself? He quirks an eyebrow.

"My dad says it's impolite."

"What? 'Queer?'"

She nods. "It's disrespectful... you know, towards...well,... people like your moms."

"My moms use it as a way to describe themselves, they're not hurt by it."

She leans forward, interested at this.

He felt a slight awkwardness, almost defensive. But she was trying to respect his mothers, there was no reason to explain anything to her. "Anyways, I just meant... I just find it odd, that after they clearly went out of their way to make this evening awkward for you and me both, your word to describe them is 'great.'"

Lauren shrugs her shoulders, "I think that was the first time I've ever been offered to take a whack at a piñata instead of being offered a piece of cake."

He rubs a hand over his face, "I'm so sorry. Seriously."

"I definitely wasn't expecting all this. If you'd told me, I would've skipped my violin lesson," she laughs out. "They just seem so ...," she pauses trying to come up with the right word.

"White?," he tries to help.

She chuckles, "I was thinking 'involved?' My dad knows what's going on with me don't get me wrong, he just works really long hours. Like he would've been too tired to make such a festive evening if I said I had someone coming over."

"Again, I'm sorry for the whole hooplah. It's like they get some weird enjoyment out of seeing how much I can take."

"It was really fun," she says and places her hand on his shoulder, "stop apologizing."

He feels his skin line with goosebumps. He stands up and rearranges some items on his desk. "Do you uh, do you want something to drink?"

"Are you kidding?," her eyes light up with wonder."I just had like three of those Tamarindo Jarrito thingies," she says with a smile.

He gets his Spanish textbook from his shelf and the oak tag Piper picked up for their project on Antoni Gaudi. "Right," he says, of course she doesn't want anything else to eat or drink, you idiot. "So do you know anything about this Gaudi guy?"

"Just that he designed a bunch of artsy buildings in Spain. Isn't your mom some kind of architect or something?"

"Architectural designer," he corrects her with the same tone Alex usually used when people confused her occupation.

"Soooo, she'd probably know a lot about this stuff, right?"

"No," he answered almost too quickly, "I- I don't know, let's just look him up okay?," he says pulling his laptop down onto his lap. He turns it on. He stares at her momentarily, with an apologetic look across his face, "it's loading."

She nods, her lips pull to the side and looks around his room. "Your room...your whole house smells really good," she offers.

"My mom's store... her candles...not the saint candles, but the green one, it's juniper, from her store."

"Oh," she offers with a small smile seeing he's still embarrassed.

Someone walks past his room but it isn't clear who, until the rasp calls, "James?," from somewhere else in the apartment.

He excuses himself and offers Lauren the computer. He finds Alex, "you're sitting on your floor."

He looks back at her, duh?

"Offer her a pillow or something ya doof."

"Now you're concerned about impressions? She's obviously crazy, sitting through that...," he shakes his head motioning in the direction of their dining room table. "Were fine," he says and walks away.

He pointedly walks through the living room to grab a couch pillow, damning himself internally for not having the sense to have offered this girl somewhere more comfortable to sit. He glares at Piper on the way, for having allowed the charade. She caresses his head, he pulls away abruptly. He sits back down on his floor next to the girl that makes him second guess the perfection of his hair and offers her the pillow to sit on.

"Thanks," she says and sits, with her legs bent underneath herself, on top the pillow.

Harper comes in and sets a photo album down beside him, with an un-used candle propped on top. His eyes widen, he can't remember if that's an album of baby pictures or of his moms from when they traveled together.

"Mommy said you could use the pictures in there, but just make sure they have two before you use them," she says and skips out.

He exhaled relieved. He picked up the candle that weighed on the album cover. A green candle. That smelled of juniper. His stomach tensed. "I guess this is for you," he offers her the candle still with some annoyance that his family was eavesdropping on them.

"Cool, thank you!," she sniffs it, "yeah this is totally what your room smells like," she bites her lip realizing how excitedly she said those words.

They looked through the pictures page by page, identifying those with similar images to the ones that they found on the internet.

"They traveled all over the place," she tells him as he glues a photo to the board while she flips through another page of the album.

"Yeah," he agrees, not wanting to get into the tension he experienced every time he asked them for further details about those times. He looks through a few more pages with her, while extracting relevant photos; he looks at Alex's face and laughs, "she looks pissed off. My mom must've made her take all of these pics."

"She has the coolest hair!," Lauren says out loud looking at a pic of Alex's pin up style.

He stops what he's doing to take a look at the picture she's referring to, having never noticed anything special about his mother's hairstyle.

"I only know how to do a braid or throw it up," she stops realizing she's ranting to this boy about her hair, "sorry," she says looking self conscious.

"I like your braid," he offers awkwardly.

She draws her lips in and fights force of her mouth upturning. They work on their project, exchanging further conversation while they work. They hear the buzzer from the intercom ring, and moments later Piper knocks gently on Jamie's door, "Lauren, your dad's here."

Jamie helps her pack up her backpack and walks her out to where her father waits near his front door. The older man expresses his appreciation for allowing the kids to do their homework in their home and for making sure his daughter was fed.

"And the candle," Lauren adds with a glance of appreciation toward Piper as she raises up her parting gift. Her dad takes her backpack and wraps his arm around her shoulders as they walk out. Jamie can hear the echo of her father's voice, "...have a party or something?," as Piper shuts and locks their door.

"She's very sweet baby."

"Yeah, yeah, " he replied not wanting to get into all the crap they'd given him since Lauren apparently had a great time. "Can she come over later in the week? We didn't get to finish and it's due Monday."

"You didn't finish? You were in there for 3... sure, she can come over."

He goes to his bedroom and comes back to the living room to replace the photo album on the shelf.

"She's coming back huh?," Alex pipes up.

"Mmmhmmm," he muttered. He wanted to throw in her face that her plan failed to humiliate him entirely, since his love interest requested completion of their project at his apartment again. "She weirdly likes it here."

Alex hooks her arm around Piper's neck and pulls Jamie in toward them , "and could you blame her?"

He wiggles free from the forced embrace, "yeah, she told me her dad works a lot, and that she thought "my moms were great," he looks at them baffled.

Alex elbows Piper in her side as Piper rubs a hand over the arm that's still hanging over her shoulder.

He rolls his eyes, "told her I had a spare; that she could take either of you."

"What? Her mom's no fun?"

He twists his mouth, "she passed away when she was little. And then I felt like a jerk," he says shaking his head. "She doesn't really remember her."

"Shit," Alex says while Piper raises a hand to her mouth. "Really?," the brunette continues, "poor thing."

"Yeah, she said her aunt is around a lot but, it can't be the same," he says shrugging his shoulders. "Anyways, good night."

Their son retreats back to his room while Alex takes a seat at their dining room table. Piper kneels forward on an adjacent chair and watches the frustration at the injustice take over her wife's face. This feeling of unfairness regarding the of loss of a mother at a young age, was too familiar, that, and the prospect that this girl only had one parent left and he worked long hours, most likely leaving her often alone.

"I knew she seemed a bit mature," Alex verbalized her thoughts. "I mean granted the kid's not in squalor, probably living on Park Avenue with a doorman, but fuck, " she exhales.

Piper placed her fingertips atop the brunette's head and spreads them out massaging her scalp.

"Do you think they realize, while we may be slightly annoying," she says lifting the Chilindrina DVD, and rests her opposite hand over Piper's chuckling mouth, "that that annoying presence is a good thing?"

Piper removes Alex's hand from her mouth, "honestly? I think it's something that's regarded as an inconvenience or it's simply taken for granted until it's gone."

Alex slowly nodded.

"Nicky told me to buck up when I used to bitch about the shit my mother went on about, when she came for visitation."

"You still bitch about her," she says looking at her wife sideways.

"I know. It's a bad habit, alright? It's a weird fortune to have her claw her way back into my life every time I create this distance."

"I'm immune to your princess act, no need for justification." She rests her head on her crossed arms on their table, "you know you'd think by now, I'd be a bit better. Like I wouldn't miss her as much."

Piper tightens her lips.

Alex can't help but huff amusedly at Piper's expression, "that's the same face your mother made when I told her I missed my mom."

She immediately changed her expression to one of shock. "You talked to her? About your mom?"

"Yeah," Alex said through the crooked lips that were still pressed against her arm, "a looooong time ago."

The blonde's back straightens as she withdraws her hand from the comforting strokes she'd been providing. "When was this?"

Alex's head comes up, and looks slightly depressed at the loss of contact, "the day we told your folks they were going to be grandparents. I'd stepped away to clear my head, and your mom told me that I'd be alright, that though the pain wouldn't really ever go away, I would be okay. She was just...comforting," she said matter of factly.

Piper releases her trapped breath, "why is she just so pleasant with everyone else but finds something to nag me about every time we share a morsel of atmospheric space?"

"Can you shut the fuck up? Seriously."

Piper's eyes widen at the blunt request. "Fuck is shut up," she whispers as she takes Alex's hands in her own.

"She's twisted," she says as she tries to pull her hands free from Piper's grasp but the blonde squeezes harder and she relents, "I'll give you that. I don't get her all the time, her avoidance of all things imperfect, and her criticisms, I'm in total agreement with you there. But she's a heck of a grandmother and she's always been there for you, despite her comfort. Despite what lies she told the other Stepford wives..."

Piper releases a cackle.

Alex finishes, "... she was there."

"I know," she confesses ashamed despite her lifetime of indignity around her mother.

"Sorry," Alex tells her, "I know she isn't perfect, neither was mine. But fuck if she didn't do what she could with the circumstances."

"Talk to her then," Piper encourages her. "If she was here, right now, what would you talk about?"

Alex shakes her head, "she's not here though...," her voice trails off with sadness of the reality. "But she comes to you at times, right? Just talk to her as if she was here."

She blinks and looks crossly at the blonde who's staring at her awed. "And you're going to listen to me? Essentially, watch me, have a conversation with myself?"

"I can talk too."

Alex sits back in her chair and exhales, "it doesn't work like that." She picks at the dirt underneath her nail and flicks it, "I mean aside from talking to her, I just wish Jamie and Harper got to know her."

"Of course. You know, just because she's not here doesn't mean we can't implement things into their lives that you think she would've made sure happened for them. Like if she had them, what do you think she'd do with them?"

Alex smiles at the fantasy, "well first off they'd have to go through a detox anytime they came home from being with her because I was essentially raised on fast food and Cheetos."

Piper mirrors the smile displayed across her wife's face. "Okay, what else?"

She hooks her hands behind her head, her elbows flare out to the sides, "I don't know Pipes, she just talked to me, like I was one of her girlfriends," she smiles slightly. "Like I could come to her with anything, and she really listened. She didn't judge me, even if I was wrong, she always had my back," she looks up into her head. "I don't know how to necessarily make them feel like they can do that with me."

"Well I think it's been established, that when something is hidden, instead of coming forward with whatever the issue may be, like knowingly running late and choosing to prolong the issue, it's going to blow up in their faces. Big time. What else?"

She mulls memories over in her head. Piper watches as she licks her lips, the index finger taps their table, "Fridays," she starts as she turns toward Piper bending a leg underneath herself, "she'd work the 3 to 11 shift, so I'd go with her to work, after she picked me up from school. I'd do my homework in the back, ass around for a while and as the restaurant emptied out, we'd get a booth, one for a couple, and she'd get me a chocolate Fribble and we'd play 50's jukebox songs and sing really loud," she says with a huge smile, "those were her favorite songs."

"So having dessert together while listening to bad music?"

She shoves her, "it wasn't bad music. It was like Doo Wop and Elvis."

"Well, you've always got your junk playing around the house, I'm sure Jamie would love a copy of the Spanish playlist next time we sit down for dessert."

Alex snickers, "yeah." Her face darkens, "something I don't want to pass down... I don't want them to have this false idea of what's really true. She did that...with my dad...and it was a huge disappointment, learning that this person was someone else," she shuts her eyes tight and then looks straight into Piper's eyes, "I feel like a hypocrite." Piper looks over her face and understands the feeling completely. "I've been saying forever, we're not telling them things because they're too young to understand, but we both know that's not it."

"Everyone has things they don't want their children to know about. Things they aren't proud of."

"I don't want to keep avoiding it though," she concludes leaning forward on her propped up hands, "whatever either of them ask me, next time, I'm telling them."

"Al..."

"Not everything, just pieces at a time, just what they ask. I can't ask them to be forthright with me and then not give them the same." The brunette looks up at Piper who takes a deep breath in and lets it out slowly; her blue eyes meet her own, in agreement. "What about you? Is there anything that went on in your family that you'd actually like to keep going? Traditions?"

Piper's teeth clench together, she forces a hideous smile, "meeeh, you know," she says. "You know what, yes, going to performances. I want to make sure they see live performances and we haven't taken Harper to a big show yet." Her mind trails off, revolving around countless family outings to the theater. "I remember getting dressed in fancy clothes and going to dinner, getting some new exciting food, ordering a special drink, buying candy on the corner before we went inside to be seated- it was a whole big event."

"Can we go to a diner before the show? One that has a juke box in the booth?" Piper shakes her head no, "after the show, for milkshakes or dessert."

Alex smiles at her gratefully, "thanks." -

They're seated at their table for pre-theater dinner. They'd made it a point to dress up for Harper's first time seeing a show on Broadway. Alex chuckles as she watches their daughter loop her purse, loaded with chapstick, her own ticket, and several Werther's candies, all deemed essential by Piper, on the back of her chair. The waiter pushes her chair in and drapes a napkin over her velvet dress. Her patent leather clad feet swing underneath the table as she's finally considered old enough to sit through an entire production.

"Can I start you off with some drinks?," their waiter asks.

"Chardonnay?," the blonde raises an eyebrow checking if that's alright with her wife who's straightening the bow in their daughter's, for once, tamed hair. The brunette nods.

"Two glasses of chardonnay and two Shirley Temple's please." The waiter nods and walks away.

"Shirley what?," Jamie asks Piper.

"Hush, you'll like it. Look at the menu, figure out what you want to order."

The waiter sets their drinks in front of them, and takes their food order.

"It has fizzies!," Harper discovers brightly.

Piper watches both of their kids move their straws about their glasses of red liquid, as she once did as a child; softly giggling as they try to get the cherry that has settled to the bottom to come to the surface. This kind of 'special,' is what she remembers.

"Remember when you took me to the Gramercy Tavern? Before The Nutcracker?," she asks Alex in her pre-theater memory stupor. She'd been so excited to be taken out to see a show on a big stage again versus watching a miniature college production.

Alex smirks, "of course."

"What's so special about the Gramercy Tavern?," Jamie asks as his mother's look lost in their nostalgia.

"She took me on a date there," she tells him.

His leans forward intrigued. "Was that the first time you went out?," he asks somewhat surprised that they finally shared a piece of information about one of their past dates.

"No, that was already a few months in," she nods and takes a sip of her wine.

"Well, where'd you go on your first date? No," he tries to collect himself and ask a question of higher priority, "where did you first meet?," he looks back and forth between his mothers with his mouth hanging open slightly, waiting for either of them say anything.

Alex glances at Piper and takes a breath, "we met at a bar," she exhales and smiles tightly with open eyes.

"Your tongue is red!," Harper points at her brother's tongue, as it practically hangs out of his mouth, his dumbfounded expression makes her laugh momentarily before she wonders, "what's a bar?"

"It's a place grown up's go to have drinks," the brunette explains. "Okay," he waves his hand at the definition of a bar, "so then what?"

"Your mom walked in and ordered a drink," Alex chuckles and continues, "and I thought she was very pretty," she says leaning in towards Harper, "so I went up to her and asked her to come with me and some of my friends so we could get to know each other a little better." Harper smiles up at her and takes a sip of her drink.

"That is not what happened," Piper says amazed by the misconstrued relay of events. Alex's face is paler than it naturally is.

"What really happened!?," James now turns his attention to Piper. He's gnaws at his straw.

She points her finger at Alex, "she teased me! About everything she could. I was trying to get a job at that bar. She made fun of all the things about me that were on a piece of paper I gave to a man who worked there. And then, she made fun of the drink I ordered and she called me Laura Ingalls Wilder."

Alex cackles as she sits back still satisfied with her pick up line, "man that never gets old."

Jamie looks at Alex completely confused, "who's Laura Ingalls Wilder?"

She continues laughing, "your mom." Piper looks over her shoulder before dipping her finger into her ice water and flicking it at the laughing brunette.

"No," she says catching her breath, "she's an author and the character of her own book series about growing up in the country. Your mom's dress looked like she grew up on a farm."

Piper glares at her with pursed lips. "Well it was nice enough that you came over to talk to me." Their food is placed on the table in front of them.

"Yeah," she huffs, "it was the dress," she tells her sarcastically.

"Did you have a dress too?," Harper asks her biting into a potato fingerling. Alex wrinkles an eyebrow, "yeah, I had on a dress."

"And blue hair," Piper adds.

Both their kids' mouths drop open.

"It was a long, long, long time ago," Alex tries justifying her artistic choices.

"Can I have blue hair?," Harper asks sitting up straight.

"No, you may not," Alex quickly answers her.

"Aw," she settles back down.

Alex exhales a small sigh of relief as she forks some food into her mouth and looks at her wife. They continue filling in, the much sought after blanks of that evening, happy to finally bring some more awareness of their past into their children's lives.